It is expected that in the future old people are going to outnumber young people in many countries. Do you feel this is a positive or negative development?

In many parts of the world, the ratio of older

people

to younger

people

is swelling.

Although

an ageing population does pose a few benefits, it is felt that

this

trend is more negative than positive in nature.

This

will be shown by looking at how a large elderly populace strains a society’s public health resources and deters a country’s younger members from having children of their own. For one, the aged require extra attention from a country’s public health services, and

this

can put pressure on an economy.

For

example

, ageing Canadians increasingly depend on free public health care

that is

funded by taxpayers. As the number of elderly Canadians increases, financing their medical needs is expected to put immense stress on the Canadian economy.

Thus

,

this

example

makes it clear that growing numbers of old

people

in a society is a negative phenomenon.

In addition

to

this

, younger

people

are often deterred from having children of their own when they are faced with the burden of caring for an elderly family member. In Japan, for

example

, fertility rates stagnated during the twentieth century in part

due to

the load many families had to bear in looking after older relatives.

This

example

illustrates the link that exists between larger numbers of elderly

people

and reduced birthrates. As lower birthrates are typically unhealthy for a country, it is obvious that the trend of ageing populations is not a positive one. As the above evidence shows, there are many drawbacks to nations with heavy weightings of old

people

. Despite

this

, it is assumed that little can be done to counter

this

development.